Indians deserve a tax advantage

Published 12:01 am, Friday, June 10, 2011

So Jim Calvert ("At last, a fair standard of tax collection," Commentary, June 1) thinks we should all have our shorts in a bunch because American Indian smoke shops have had an edge in tobacco sales over convenience stores.

I've noticed that those convenience stores seem to be doing very well themselves, selling other legal, but unhealthy products like soda, junk food, fossil fuels and alcoholic beverages. None of them are taxed at more than 100 percent of the price, as cigarettes are.

As both a student of history and someone who grew up with Seneca kids in western New York, I say let the Indians keep any edge they have. They deserve it.

While much of the genocide they suffered was from the unintentional introduction of Eurasian diseases, there was plenty of systematized savagery to go along, not to mention having had two continents stolen from them.

And now to be forced to act as tax collectors for the occupying government?

It makes a person want to take up smoking, just to support the Indians.